MYTH OF THE MOTORCYCLE HOG

HAS any means of transport ever suffered a worse drubbing than the motorcycle? In the 17 years since Stanley Kramer put Marlon Brando astride a Triumph in The Wild One, big bikes and those who ride them have been made into apocalyptic images of aggression and revolt —Greasy Rider on an iron horse with 74-cu.-in. lungs and ape-hanger bars, booming down the freeway to rape John Doe's daughter behind the white clapboard bank: swastikas, burnt rubber, crab lice and filthy denim. It has long been obvious that the bike was heir to the cowboy's horse in movies; but if Trigger had been loaded with the sado-erotic symbolism that now, after dozens of exploitation flicks about Hell's Angels, clings to any Harley chopper, the poor nag could not have moved for groupies. As an object to provoke linked reactions of desire and outrage, the motorcycle has few equals —provided it is big enough.

When Easy Rider was released, it looked for a time as though public attitudes might soften. A lot of people were on the side of Captain America and his fringed partner Billy, shotgunned off their glittering, raked choppers on a Southern back road. But for every cinemagoer who vicariously rode with Fonda and Hopper in that movie, there were probably ten who went with their redneck killers in the pickup truck. The chorus from press and TV remains pretty well unchanged, resembling the bleat of Orwell's sheep in Animal Farm: "Four wheels good, two wheels bad!" The image of the biker as delinquent will take a long time to eradicate. "You meet the nicest people on a Honda," proclaims the Japanese firm that has cornered nearly 50% of the bike market in the U.S.; but the general belief is that you still meet the nastiest ones on a chopper.

To the public, the names of the outlaw or semi-outlaw motorcycle clubs is a litany of imps in the pit, from the Animals, and Axemen, through the Equalizers and Exterminators, the Marauders and Mongols, the Raiders, and Road Vultures, to the Warlocks and Wheels of Soul. The unsavory names with which these gangs have christened themselves are apt to make the public forget that their collective membership is probably no more than 3,000, the merest fraction of the 3,000,000 people who regularly ride bikes in the U.S. In fact, these "outlaws" on the road are infinitely less of a threat than the driver of a station wagon with two martinis under his seat belt.

The myth goes roaring on. Business, though, may kill it, for bikes are big business today. At the end of World War II there were fewer than 200,000 registered motorcycles in the U.S. Today there are nearly 2,500,000, most of them imports from Japan, Germany and Britain. The majority are small, almost civilized creatures, below 500 cc. in engine capacity. But the popularity of the big snorting monsters, which can go from a standstill to 60 m.p.h. in less than six seconds flat and cruise comfortably on freeways at 90 m.p.h., has also ascended. It has its perversities.